JAPC - The Kepler Mission To Find Earth-like Planets

Speaker: Prof. William Welsh, Dept. of Astronomy, SDSU

Topic: "The Kepler Mission To Find Earth-like Planets"

Time: 2:00 PM, Friday, April 10th, 2009

Place: P-148 (refreshments will be served at 1:45 PM in P145A)

Abstract: Currently over 340 extrasolar planets have been discovered; however almost all of these are giant planets, very unlike the Earth. Terrestrial-like planets have not been discovered because they are too small for current searches. Launched on 2009 March 6, NASA's Kepler Mission is the first project capable of detecting Earth-like planets, and its goal is to determine the fraction of stars that have such planets. By surveying 100,000 stars, a null detection would be statistically significant. Kepler will detect candidate planets via the transit technique: photometrically measure the 0.008% change in brightness caused when the planet eclipses its host star. In this talk I will discuss Kepler's goals and how these will be achieved, and my role in the Mission as a Kepler Participating Scientist.

Hosted by: Prof. William Welsh.

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